Ultraman Sigma Nu
by Kong Food Kid
Summary: Short story I whipped up ages ago. May or may not continue it.


**Ultraman Sigma Nu**

Ever since he was young, Peter Newton had dreamt about that frontier known as space; the lonely neighboring planets, the monolithic stars, the nebulas and the dark matter which stretched out as far as one's faculties would allow. It was only natural then, that he would commit his educative years in the learning of space and its many enigmas. Immediately following his graduation from a prestigious university, he, along with several of his peers, were requested to commandeer the Orbital Defense System, made operational just days ago. This request (coming from the United Earth government, of all things) was far too good to pass up, and Newton accepted it without second-thought. So after months of intense training from the Global Space Exploration Committee (which had replaced the incompetent and often deceitful National Aeronautics and Space Administration), the bug-eyed, mustachioed man took his place at the helm of ODS-24...

Alas, actually fulfilling his dream had brought it to its end. For through this occupation came lonliness, where Newton would unconsciously chatter to himself in an effort to break the solitude; days vanished and became an agonizing stretch of uneventfulness, watching for something that perhaps would never show. The ODS was installed for the sole-purpose of deterring or annihilating invaders from the vast unknown; it wound around the Earth like a gas giant's ring of ice, with each station seperated by an interval of several kilometers. All were equipped with cruise missiles and electromagnetic railguns - but as far as Newton was concerned, they - no, the _whole System,_ was a grand waste of international currency.

Today's morning began much like the others. Newton was wandering about the cramped station, his finger curled around the handle of a ceramic, coffee-filled cup. When this routine grew in stagnancy, he settled himself before the command console and gazed into the visual above, which was displaying a frozen scene of the Moon in the midst of star-strewn black - a sight he was all too accustomed to seeing. So immersed was he in the abyss and oppressive quiet, that the first blip on the radar failed to catch his attention. That changed in a split-second, and he steadily lowered his eyes to the red-swept screen as the severity of the situation drew over him, causing his innards to sink from fear and disbelief...

An invader.

Consternation took hold. How else was one supposed to react after months of self-imprisonment? Yet Newton collected his wits just enough to slam a fist against the alarm; at once a chain-reaction of blaring horns erupted throughout the System.

It was around this time that the Overseer of the ODS, Admiral Zimmer, had finally awoke. But he wasn't allowed time to linger beneath the covers, as the semi-darkness of his room was replaced with a deep red and a tumult to accompany it. Thereafter, he leapt clear out of bed, taking the sheets with him for a short moment while making for the door. Despite his rotund figure, he bounded down the halls of the nerve-center at a frightening pace. By the time he had reached the command room, which greeted his presence with wild voices talking over each other and a myriad of neon colors, the majority of his body was already covered in sweat, and he was hyperventilating. His beady green eyes scanned the console for the catalyst of this sudden disturbance; the button with a number '24' on it was flashing wildly. The Admiral shook his head at this. He was already aware of the instability of his controllers - Ensign Newton in particular. Certainly a hallucination or some other form of mental-lapsing, or even a malfunction of the remote sensors, was at work here...

Giving an annoyed sigh, he jabbed the aforementioned button, ending the cacophony of both the alarm and alarmed ODS pilots. "Ensign Newton, what's happening over there? Over..." he asked in his gruff voice.

"S-Sir... the radar's picked up a bandit..." replied Newton, still jittery from his fright. "It's already... h-halfway past the Moon... m-moving fast..."

"What?" The Admiral set his sights upon his own radar screen. Indeed, the man's explaination mirrored what he now saw: a triangular shape floating past a much larger circular object at impossible speeds. It had to have been a space-craft of prodigious advancement. Or worse, a _monster._ "Do you have visual contact yet?" inquired Zimmer, keeping calm. But before his question could be answered, the radar and visual of the dark ocean outside became blank and one of static, respectively. Zimmer didn't need Newton's outcry of "The System's... the whole System's gone offline!" to understand what had just happened. Their defense was being compromised...

As the big-wheeled officer dropped into his chair (his face frozen with terror), a calm yet unfamiliar voice chimed in, "This is Captain Yuudai Kurosawa of ECPV; we have received your distress signal and are en-route to investigate."

"ECPV...?" he breathed uneasily.

Elsewhere on Earth, two aircraft painted in silver, black and violet - the signature scheme of the Elite Country Protection Vanguard, were steadily rising into the bright blue skies. The larger of the two, Phoenix-1, was being piloted by Captain Kurosawa himself, along with one of the team's underlings, Setsuko Hirata; and Deputy-Captain Daisuke Ito was at the controls of Phoenix-2. Although the latter's cockpit was designed for two pilots to operate in, the remaining member of ECPV, Tomoyuki Hirata (Setsuko's younger sibling), chose to stay behind because of his odd phobia of space. Both structures of the government-funded weapons rattled when the clouds melted into that familiar sight of desolate space; however, none of the members showed concern to this, for both Phoenixes were built to withstand such pressures.

"We've left the Earth's atmosphere," said Daisuke.

Setsuko leaned forward and exclaimed with a pointed finger, "Captain - look! The ODS is..."

It was gone. The System, labeled a remarkable feat of scientific cunning and abused beyond belief in commercials and the like, was reduced to nothing more than junk destined to float about for years to come. Suffering the same fate was the nerve-center, the carcass of which loomed several kilometers above the others. The grisly visage was enough to shock even Yuudai, whose peaceful bearing crumbled at the mere thought of all those lives lost, pointlessly. There was no chance of any surviving pilots either; not with space being the merciless thing it was...

"What could've happened...?" asked Setsuko. Even though her face was veiled by a helmet, it was obvious from the fault in her voice that she was in tears. "Captain...?"

"From what I can gather, a simultaneous detonation." Yuudai responded in a robotic tone. "Both the ODS and its headquarters must've been destroyed through self-induced, electromagnetic overloads."

"But by who?"

"I'm not sure. Whomever it was, they didn't wish to be seen."

The Deputy-Captain posed the next question, "So what do we do now?"

Yuudai pondered for a moment, gathering himself again while he did so. "Investigate." he finally said. "According to their radio chatter, the bandit was making a pass by the Moon - and since we haven't heard from United Earth in regards to an invasion, it's very possible our target has gone in hiding. So let's scour the Moon's surface and see if we can't find anything."

"Roger!" Daisuke declared.


End file.
